The Nick Minchin-John Howard experiment has been a very drab one.
The vote for the constitutional convention was reduced to a bureaucratic function. It was like getting a new electricity connection or telling the bank you have changed your address.
I didn’t feel I was exercising my right to vote. My idea of exercising that right means going to the local primary school — a public place — seeing other members of the public there, looking at how-to-vote cards and then being handed a ballot paper while others around are doing the same thing. In other words, it is a public expression of a private right.
That way you get a sense of community, a sense of “”demos” about democracy. There is a sense of excitement and exercise about that.
Then there is the result. In a normal ballot, we all vote at once and the count (or least the bulk of it) is done that night. It is a snapshot, a statement of democracy. The people have spoken. The results go up that night on a bloody big whiteboard broadcast to the public at large. There is drama and excitement. It is the drama of democracy. Blow the cost of $3 a head.
This Minchin-Howard vote is a denial of a sense of occasion. Maybe it was designed that way: to belittle what looks like becoming the first collective public statement by the Australian people that they want a republic.
The penny-pinching Minchin-Howard system might be fine and efficient for deciding the board members of the XYZ Club or the secretaryship of a union, but not as an expression of the public will.
But it lacks a sense of unifying, contemporaneous public statement.
There were other drab elements to the vote. It was like responding to junk mail — for a book or wine order. We had to sign the ballot envelope. Family members could peer over our shoulders and interfere. There was no full preferential option as has been the case with all federal elections. We either had to put a 1 in one box above the line or we were limited to nine preferences for 16 candidates below the line. Would the ballot paper get to its destination? Would everyone get a ballot paper in the first place? What would stop someone dashing up the street swiping ballot papers? The Electoral Commission may say it has all these things under control, but why introduce all these elements of doubt over a two-week ballot when we have the wherewithal to take an instantaneous, secure snapshot?
Then we have the other great element of doubt. This was a voluntary vote. The literate and the interested will vote. Many will not. Once again it erodes the sense of occasion.
The only saving grace of this first-time system is that it will present a dilemma for Special Minster of State Nick Minchin, a long-time proponent of voluntary voting. I suspect that John Howard wants to put as many hurdles as possible in the way of Australia achieving a republic with an Australian head of state. Among the hurdles has been this voluntary voting system. It means, however, that Minchin and Howard will be hard-pushed to disown it if, as I suspect, the republicans get a substantial majority. After all, they devised the system
However, if in the unlikely event the monarchists do well and the convention ends in an acrimonious irreconcilable fight (as designed), the republicans can blame the voting system.
John Howard’s whole handling of republican issue is likely to backfire on him. Despite his having done his damnedest to stymie it by putting up as many hurdles as he can, I suspect the convention will have a large republican majority. And if they play their cards right they can quickly move the debate away from what Howard wants (a deadlock over whether we should have a republic) into a positive debate about the more pressing question: what sort of republic should it be.
As it is, the republic issue looks like joining other key national issues in describing the way John Howard defines himself and the way the electorate is increasingly defining him: as a collection of negatives. He is against a republic; against apologising for stolen children; against a heroin trial; against euthanasia; against a repudiation of Pauline Hanson; against unions.
It is fine to be against some of those things, but it seems to me Howard projects very few of his policy positions positively. He does not even say he is in favour of the Queen or in favour of a GST. Mostly, he defines his position negatively. Indeed, his prime ministership was created upon a negative: we don’t want Paul Keating.
If you are a constitutional monarchist you should be proud of the Queen as Australian Head of State, instead of defining your position in the negative as being opposed to a republic.
After all, the Queen herself describes her position positively that way. On her internet site she says: “”A Commonwealth realm is a country where the Queen is Head of State.” And then she lists them: “”Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas” and so on. There is no mention of the Commonwealth countries like India and Zimbabwe where the President is head of state.
She says, “”The Royal Titles Act 1953 provided that legislation on the Royal Title was to be enacted separately by each of The Queen’s Commonwealth realms, i.e. each Commonwealth country which retained a monarchical constitution, recognising The Queen as Head of State.”
She is Australia’s head of state and constitutional monarchists should be proud of it.
Sure, the same internet site (www.royal.gov.uk/today/index.htm) acknowledges her British role as “”a focus of national unity and representing Britain around the world”. This has its difficulties. None the less, the retreat to the negative has greater difficulties.
Ultimately for John Howard it invites us to see the perpetrator of the negatives in a negative way. It invokes the big negative: we don’t want John Howard.
I suspect Peter Costello is a republican.